Update: I was unfortunately not aware of Shamus Young's severe criticism of Fallout 3 available here to link in the original piece and I regret that. It dovetails rather nicely with what I've written and it's much better executed than my piece. I strongly recommend anyone...

GAMING NEWS

Ubisoft Only Interested In Creating Franchises With Its IP

Ubisoft apparently isn't in the business of making games that can't be turned into franchises. As such, gamers can expect a Watch Dogs 2, 3, and 4.

In an interview with The A List Daily, Ubisoft senior VP of sales and marketing, Tony Key, explained why the publisher has no interest in making standalone experiences. When asked whether or not we'll see future entries of Watch Dogs, Key replied, "Absolutely. That's what all our games are about; we won't even start if we don't think we can build a franchise out of it. There's no more fire and forget - it's too expensive."

Key then went on to add:

We feel like we're in a really good place with Watch Dogs, but until we're the biggest game of the year we're not going to be satisfied.

Last year we cleaned up at E3 because we were pretty much the only next-gen game around. Watch Dogs for us is really a franchise because we're tapping into something people really care about, never more than when the NSA PRISM scandal broke.

How do you feel about Ubisoft's franchise-heavy approach? Is it the only viable way for such a large company to operate now that games are growing more and more expensive to make? Let us know in the comments below.